


Indescribable Fell Out Through a Hole Inside the Sun

by ALC_Punk



Category: Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Community: halfamoon, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-03
Updated: 2013-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-28 00:23:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/668170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ALC_Punk/pseuds/ALC_Punk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lady Jennifer sometimes remembers her experiences in the War Machines, and now there are Cybermen chasing her and Amy Pond--a girl from the future. Plus, kissing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Indescribable Fell Out Through a Hole Inside the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> idek. I started this ages ago, and then typed out two-thirds of it tonight. I'd been listening to the _War Games_ , I think, originally. And she is pretty amazing (Lady Jennifer). One wonders what she did afterwards ~~she probably did not become a lesbian spy and/or space pirate~~ Title is utter hyperbole and Garbage lyrics (Big Bright World)  
>  Set: Series five, before Vincent and the Doctor; for the Cybermen, we're looking at _Revenge of the Cybermen_ , hiring _humans_ to blow up gold planets for them era. Skulking is what they did best, at that point. (with some time travel thrown in for why they managed to get somewhere they didn't belong)

There are days when Lady Jennifer remembers her time spent on another world. But the memories make less and less sense as time goes on. Surely, she can't really have driven an ambulance through the American Civil War, or run from a Roman legion in full armor.

Memory is a funny thing, however. It's easy to convince herself that she wasn't there. Life has to be lived, after all. And discordant notes make that difficult.

That's why she tells herself the redhead isn't an anomaly.

Amy Pond's clothing is from a different era. Amy's flirtatiousness and self-image are worlds different from the other women Jennifer has known. That's why, even though they're running for their lives from giant silver robots, that Jennifer lets Amy kiss her.

It's too quick, but there _is_ a danger of getting caught.

Jennifer's heart is beating too fast, and Amy's obviously pleased with herself.

"Resistance is futile." The words echo past them, and Jennifer grabs Amy's hand again.

They run, turning a blind corner.

"Oh--damn!" Amy whirls back, but it's too late. The robot is blocking their escape.

Jennifer stares at it, eyes wide, and the robot lumbers towards them. Its jerky movements give her an idea. "It can't get both of us."

"Yeah?"

"Go left--" Jennifer shoves Amy and follows her own plan, zig-zagging to one side. The robot reels towards her, arms out-stretched, but it's not fast enough to stop her.

Amy shrieks a moment later, and Jennifer turns back to grab her hand. There's a brief tug of war, and then the two women are running again.

The robot is left holding Amy's jacket.

"Damn. Loved that thing."

"I'm sure you did. Now stop talking."

Memory is a strange thing. Jennifer thinks of patching up Legionnaires and men in armor. Knights were even worse patients than corporals and sergeants. She'd thought of bashing them over the head herself, to get them to behave.

Thought leads to questions. Panting, she gasps out: "Are they knights?"

"No, cyber-things," Amy answers.

Hiding with Amy on a catwalk while two more of them join the hunt seems like it should be easy. Jennifer is always practical, however. She murmurs, "There must be a way to stop them."

Amy pulls a face, but answers. "The Doctor said something about gold and chest-plates."

"You've faced them before?" Jennifer tries not to feel impressed. She doesn't think about _Doctor_.

"No. Maybe. They were different. These are a more primitive form, an earlier era, I think." Looking lost for a moment, Amy stares into a distance that Jennifer can't really see. But perhaps she can understand it.

"So how do we use gold on them?" Jennifer knows distraction is the best form of medicine, here, and she's always considered herself plucky and well up to anything. Driving ambulances in a war zone had required steel nerves, as well as the ability to fix any engine failure while being shelled.

Amy smells like sweat and hard work, as Jennifer leans in closer. "I've got gold earrings--would they be enough?"

"No." Turning her head, Amy raises her eyebrows. Her tone is almost accusatory when she says, "You enjoy this."

"It's not enjoyment." And neither are her words defensive, but Jennifer almost feels put on the spot for the moment. Even after knowing how competent she was, she'd had to push and push and prove herself over and above, at the front. To the pen-pushers, to the Red Cross, to the women who hadn't gone into the front lines as she had. She swallows all of that in an instant, and shakes her head. "Do you have a plan?"

"Well, the Doctor has a plan, apparently." Amy didn't sound particularly convinced, and her eyes are still focused on Jennifer--her mouth, specifically. "So, since we might die any minute--"

They're back to the kissing, again. Jennifer feels like she should object. Kissing in a war zone had been frowned upon, and any woman caught doing so was summarily dismissed. It had to do with the morale of the troops and discipline, and a hundred regulations that spelled out _women have their place, keep them there_.

So Jennifer defies expectations again and leans into Amy's kiss, her hand cupping the younger woman's cheek. Perfectly manicured nails delicately trace the shape of Amy's ear, while they learn the give and take of the moment. The first heady rush fades into something else, and it's as though she's learning how to kiss for the first time all over again. Heady though the sensation is, she stops, breathless. 

"Now we've established our credentials," murmurs Amy.

Gold dust... Lady Jennifer straightens, a professional smile touching her lips. "I've an idea how to defeat these robots."

"Cybermen."

"Yes." On her feet, she holds out a hand. "Miss Amy, if you'll come with me?"

-=-

It's all too easy, after that. A nearby jewelry store conned, Lady Jennifer leaning upon her dignity and enough double-talk about government efforts and spies, and a small bag of gold dust is in her possession (paying off spies is quite possibly a great deal easier in the real world).

With Amy's help, she rigs a delivery system, and then it's back into the warren of streets and into the warehouse they'd escaped to bait the trap. 

"Oi!" Amy's shout disrupts the patrol pattern of the three Cybermen, and they turn towards her with orders to halt, to surrender. She runs, of course. That's part of the trap, after all. 

Lady Jennifer waits until the last possible moment, as the Cybermen stalk after Amy, their boots thudding against the floor. This close, she thinks again of knights in armor, of the awesome potential for death they contain. She doesn't think about how it could be her who doesn't live to see the morrow. 

_Now._ A simple bucket system, a yank of a cord, and a cloud of gold dust envelopes all three. There is more in purse the jewelry shop owner gave her. It's heavy in her bag, and she wonders if it will be required. Amy never mentioned things like troop strength. Perhaps she hadn't known. The three surrounded by dust give shuddering, rattling death moans. 

The sorts of sound that have patterned her dreams, when she has them. Losing a man on the battlefield had never been easy, and she'd been proud of her calm stoicism then. 

Now, she steps back, lets Amy pull her around a corner to watch the death throes from a safe distance.

She hadn't expected the green slime.

-=-

"Amy! I've found their capsule, it looks like it was an advanced party of three--scouts, possibly--" the man breaks off, staring at her, then at Amy, then at the pile of useless robots. He deflates a little, as Lady Jennifer categorizes his clothing as also being from a different era. 

"We've sorted them, Doctor." Amy is smug, and beaming, as she slings an arm around Jennifer. "Her Grace knew all the tricks we needed. Gold dust, yeah?"

"Well, yes." Turning from them, he waves a device at the pile, frowning at it as it gives him a reading he dislikes. One that disappoints, Jennifer decides. He'd wanted to save the day, she can almost see the sulkiness radiating off him in waves. A child with his surprise removed. 

"Will there be others?" She asks the question quietly, calmly. Best to be prepared for the worst. Rolling bandages wasn't simply to pass the time, after all. 

"No. Not in this era, anyway." His eyes bore into hers for a moment, and then widen. 

Recognition, Lady Jennifer decides. That is the look in his eyes as he whirls away, babbling something about a time-shift and the capsule crashing. 

"So, Doctor, what next?" Nudging Jennifer with her hip, Amy continues, "We owe Lady Jennifer here a great debt."

There is something there, for a moment. Some flicker of memory teasing its way forward past memories of men dying in ambulances, and hospitals never having enough supplies. But Jennifer is thinking about Amy owing her a debt, and how payment in kind was usually how these things went. And her entire body flushes at the wanton direction her thoughts are taking. She swallows. "You're not from around here, are you?"

Her question makes him turn, this Doctor. "You shouldn't know that."

A hundred questions could be a response, but Lady Jennifer doesn't require any. "I remember you--well, not you. Him." 

"Who him?" Amy asks, tilting her head as the under-currents in the conversation change to something she's nto quite aware of. "Doctor, what's she talking about?"

"You really shouldn't know _that_ ," he repeats, shaking his head and then smacking the device in his hand against his palm. 

Serene, calm. Lady Jennifer has always hated and loathed her ability for those two concepts. Just once, she used to think. _Just once_ , she would like to rend and tear the world apart at the seams. To rant and rave, to throw caution to the wind. She draws in a breath, releases it, and shakes her head. "It doesn't matter, in the end. None of the others do. Or will, I shouldn't think."

Amy has stepped away from her. The confusion is rapidly shading into annoyance at being kept in the dark. "Jennifer? Doctor? What's going on?"

"It's very simple: we met, once. It wasn't pleasant, and he had a different face. But there's something about him that I think I would always know." Lady Jennifer holds out a hand. Shaking hands became second nature, on the battlefield--sometimes, the man you met that morning might not be alive that afternoon. "Now, I really must leave you to this and let that shopkeeper know his service hasn't been in vain."

"But the Time Lords locked away your memories, reset your brains-- _how do you remember_?" There is something terrified in his face, as though he is half-hopeful, half-frightened of a truth he wants to be a lie. 

Lady Jennifer shakes her head; she's not going to give him the truth of a night months ago where the blocks melted away, when the universe turned sideways and she knew too much. Memory had always been her downfall, as a nurse. Too perfect a memory, and everyone could be so jealous of the right answers. "I can't explain it even to myself--but I think it was Amy's clothing. She's not of this era."

The terror slides away, as though it was never there, and he nods. "Right, right. That makes sense--a sort of memory trigger, a jarring incongruity. The Cybermen probably didn't help, either."

"No, they never help anything." Amy is back, arm sliding through the Jennifer's.

"I really should go," says Jennifer, her tone not really as regretful as it could have been. She turns to Amy, brushes a finger across her lips, and then gives into the urge to kiss her again. 

There's a strange noise from the Doctor, but it's not the sort of thing she'll pay attention to. 

When they're done kissing, she smiles at Amy, eyes sliding to the Doctor. "Don't forget me. Either of you."

It's easier to walk away without asking more of their stories, to slot the experience into one more box in her mind. Knights in shining armor; Cybermen; Amy Pond's lips; a war without end. All cataloged neatly, as Lady Jennifer returns to her life of shopping in the High Street.


End file.
